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The main purpose of the game is to remove all cards from the table, assembling them in the tableau before removing them. Initially, 54 cards are dealt to the tableau in ten piles, face down except for the top cards. The tableau piles build down by rank, and in-suit sequences can be moved together. The 50 remaining cards can be dealt to the tableau ten at a time when none of the piles are empty.

Relaxed Spider: Does not require all spaces to be filled before redealing

Spiderette: Only one pack, Klondike layout; see below

Spiderwort: Three decks

Will o' the Wisp is another solitaire card game which was invented by Geoffrey Mott-Smith and is played the same way as Spiderette. The exception is that on the onset, twenty-one cards are dealt into seven columns of three with only the top card of each column face-up.

The most common software version of Spider is the one included in the 7, Vista, ME and XP versions of Microsoft Windows, Spider Solitaire.[citation needed] Spider Solitaire was introduced in the Microsoft Plus! 98 addition pack for Windows 98.[1] There are 104 cards, enough to make 8 decks. The game comes in three versions: Easy (with 8 Spade packs), Medium (with four packs each of Spades and Hearts), and Hard (with two each of all four packs).

On Unix operating systems, an early version was developed around 1989 at Sun Microsystems. A version of Spider Solitaire typically comes bundled with both the KDE and GNOME desktop environments on other Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and BSD, under the names KPatience and Aisleriot Solitaire, respectively. Versions for Macintosh and most other operating systems are also available.

The Windows version offers three levels of difficulty, with one, two, or four suits. These play modes are equivalent to disregarding suit difference, either within the colors or altogether, and thus can be simulated in the physical card game, though the computer version aids visibility by representing all cards as spades and/or hearts.

Different software implementations of spider offer alternative scoring rules. The version from Sun Microsystems from 1989 defines the following rules in the manual: 10 points for each initially face down card that gets turned over; 15 additional points for each column where all the face-down cards have been turned over (even if you don't manage to get a space); 2 points for each card that is sitting atop the next higher card of the same suit; 50 points for each completed suit removed from the tableau (in which case you do not also score for the 12 cards sitting atop next higher cards). This yields a maximum score of 990. If you win the game with 4 or more completed suits still in the tableau, add 2 points for each suit after the first three. Thus winning with all eight suits still in the tableau yields a score of 1000.

In the Windows versions of Spider Solitaire, the scoring is calculated with a starting score of 500. One point is subtracted for each move; 100 points are added for each set removed. This gives a theoretical maximum of 1254 points (assuming all 50 cards from the decks are dealt exactly into place). A bonus of 100 points is gained for completing 4 sets of the same colour. Any game completed in under 100 moves (>1200 points) should be considered commendable.[citation needed]